LEAMINGTON, Ont. – Residents were picking up the pieces Sunday while crews were working to clear roads and restore power after a tornado swept through this part of southern Ontario early in the morning, destroying homes, downing power lines and bowling over trees.
Officials quickly declared a state of emergency in the town of Leamington, located about 50 kilometres southeast of Windsor, Ont., but there were no reported deaths or injuries.
The heavy winds did, however, leave a mess of trees and downed power poles, and cleanup crews toiled through the day Sunday to clear the streets.
Late Sunday afternoon Environment Canada confirmed that a tornado in the F1 range touched down in Leamington and travelled a distance of 300 to 400 metres. There was damage over an area of two kilometres, with the rest of the wreckage caused by downbursts, said Peter Kimbell of Environment Canada.
“I’ve lived here all my life and I haven’t seen anything like this,” said Leamington deputy mayor Robert Schmidt. “It’s quite shocking.”
The wind storm was part of a “one-two punch” in the region, as it was also hit by a torrential flood that drowned crops and left ditches overflowing.
The nearby community of Harrow, Ont., “just looks like a massive lake when you drive down there,” said Richard Meloche, the deputy mayor of Essex, Ont., a community a few minutes down the road.
He said the area was inundated by the storm.
“There’s going to be a lot of corn crops that are going to have to be replanted.”
The rain came in a very short amount of time, and officials said many of the county’s aging flood-control systems were not up to the task of handling snap rains.
Linda Skowby was awoken at 3 a.m. when a maple tree collapsed onto her roof.
“It just came through like a train,” she said, motioning Sunday across the path she believed the storm travelled.
Skowby was told to stay out of her house. Besides the crack running through her living room ceiling, there was an almost immediate smell of gas after the hit, she said. Skowby said she thinks her gas line was hit.
Anne Miskovski, spokeswoman for the Town of Leamington emergency management team, called the damage “pretty extensive.”
Town officials suspect a tornado touched down around 3 a.m., Miskovski said.
“We were completely unaware of it coming,” she said.
Kimbell said two tornado warnings were actually issued overnight. No tornado materialized after the first warning. A second was issued at 2:37 a.m. A rain warning was also issued.
Susan Hlozan, whose husband works at a John Deere dealership in Harrow, said it didn’t take her long to realize a tornado hit the area. She arrived at the dealership Sunday morning to see a barn had been ripped from its foundations and thrown across a farm field.
“There’s no way the wind would take a barn right up with the posts of the barn cemented in,” Hlozan said. “It took the whole building up into the field and smashed it into kindling pieces of wood.”
Several hydro poles near the dealership were snapped at ground level and strewn at the side of the road, Hlozan said.
Emergency crews assessing the damage have set up blockades and are warning the public to avoid the storm scene while they look for potential victims under the debris.
“Because there are power outages and downed power lines, people are cautioned to be very, very careful,” said the town spokeswoman.
Declaring a state of emergency allows Leamington to receive funding from the province to help pay for its relief efforts.
Windsor Star
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.